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Friday, March 1, 2013

2012 – Year in Review, Part 1

Over the couple of years that I've been curating the Revit Add-ons blog, some add-ins have really stood out to me. Over time, many of these have been pushed to the back of this blog as newer add-ins have been released. I'd like to recognize some of these standout add-ins with my Editor's Choice awards.

Autodesk produces some excellent Revit add-ins, especially for maintenance subscribers, but I have focused only on third party applications for the purposes of these awards.

There was never any doubt in my mind as to my favorite add-in, it's Content|Studio. Considering Revit's archaic approach to managing and browsing for families, an entire cottage industry of family browsers and family management has cropped up. Content|Studio is a polished gem of an add-in that not only includes a family browser but also enables content management in a quality controlled environment, and it does so by enabling a workflow that is non-intrusive to content users. Simply sensational. Click through for my original post on Content|Studio.

While in my my mind Content|Studio stands alone, there are many other Revit add-ins deserving of special recognition. Below, broken up between paid (commercial) and free add-ins, are a series of add-ins ranked in the familiar gold, silver and bronze standings.

Paid (Commercial) Add-ins

The Gold Medal winner in the paid category is Kiwi Code's Project Browser. Not only does this add-in include a great family browser, it uniquely makes project browsing easier, more intuitive, and more powerful. Brilliant! Click through for my original post on Kiwi Codes Project Browser.


Revit and Excel interoperability is also a hot category of add-ins, and the gold standard of this data exchange has long been Ideate BIMLink.


I've long thought that a method for visually flexing families would make a great add-in. Harry Mattison's Image-O-Matic is the first and only solution that I know of.



Free Add-ins

All Revit users need a family browser. Smart Browser is a darned good one -- and it's free!


The free COINS Auto-Section Box add-in makes it easy to to analyze areas of particular interest in 3D views, and who doesn't want viewing information in 3D to be easier?



The free Revit Sp.Writer add-in allows users to create, manage and organize their shared parameters in Excel!




What a great group of add-ins. Congratulations to the award winners!

Related –
Award winning add-ins
Annual roundups

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Check out Rushforth Tools For Revit. Great excel link along with a handful of other tools for only $20. Does what more expensive tools do and it's available on Autodesk Exchange.